The Santa Clarita City Council will hold an unusual Thursday afternoon meeting for the sole purpose of discussing a regional agency’s threat to levy a $280,250 fine that would have to be paid by Santa Clarita Valley homeowners.

Last month the L.A. County Regional Water Quality Control Board notified the SCV Sanitation District of its intent to levy the fine because the sanitation district had failed to file certain paperwork related to the construction of a chloride treatment facility.

The SCV Sanitation District is the local agency that handles sewer treatment and storm water runoff. The Water Quality Control Board has said the sanitation district must reduce the amount of chloride – a salt – that the SCV sends down the Santa Clara River to the ocean.

In threatening to fine the sanitation district, the Water Quality Control Board is playing political hardball. It wants the local Sanitation District to build a chloride removal plant that could cost SCV residents upwards of $250 million.

Local sanitation district representatives have been resisting, trying to convince the Water Quality Control Board to accept less costly methods, based on the reduction in chloride levels already achieved primarily through the ban on self-regenerating water softeners.

The sanitation district has a three-member board consisting of two Santa Clarita City Council members and one Los Angeles County supervisor. It’s a wholly separate government agency from the city – but at the last City Council meeting on Dec. 11, Councilman TimBen Boydston asked that the city go on record and put its position in writing.

Comments on the Water Quality Control Board’s “notice of administrative civil liability complaint” and its intent to levy the $280,250 fine are due by Dec. 26.

The City Council wasn’t scheduled to hold a regular meeting before Dec. 26, so it will meet in a special session Thursday at 3 p.m. to formulate its response.

The meeting will be held in City Council chambers and will be televised on SCVTV (Time Warner Cable Channel 20, AT&T U-verse Channel 99, SCVTV.com Stream).

It will be preceded at 2 p.m. by a closed-door session to discuss anticipated litigation in what is probably an unrelated matter.

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